Over six years ago, in December 1989, I was looking for a "hobby" programming project that would keep me occupied during the week around Christmas. My office ... would be closed, but I had a home computer, and not much else on my hands. I decided to write an interpreter for the new scripting language I had been thinking about lately: a descendant of ABC that would appeal to Unix/C hackers. I chose Python as a working title for the project, being in a slightly irreverent mood (and a big fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus).[13]

In 2000 he further wrote:

Python's predecessor, ABC, was inspired by SETL – Lambert Meertens spent a year with the SETL group at NYU before coming up with the final ABC design![14]

Python has grown to become a popular programming language: For example, as of November 2011, it is the 3rd most popular language on the GitHub social coding website,[15] and according to a programming language popularity survey[16] it is consistently amongst the top 10 most mentioned languages in job postings. Additionally, it is consistently in the top 10 most popular languages according to the TIOBE Programming Community Index.[17]